Category: Healthcare

We interview Shaz Ahmad, Nextgate’s VP of Cloud Operations to find out why people don’t miss something until it’s gone.

It is 02.00am Pacific Time and this is the preferred hour of the day for Shaz Ahmad, in his T shirt, to handle an interview. He is a self confessed night owl, but I would’ve thoughts there are limits. For me, it is 10.am GMT and there could be no worse time to make a constructive assessment of why Nextgate’s time has come. I have told my office to hold my calls.

But Shaz is as eloquent as I am even in mid morning, and he needs to be. Nextgate identity management technology is the secret sauce that make your hospital data work, seamlessly, that you do not realise you ever needed, until something goes wrong. It is the one line of code you never appreciated, but which makes your data work. As they say in the song, isn’t it the way it goes, you never realise what you’ve got – until its gone.

Except that with Nextgate – the thing that you don’t “get” – is the problem that you’ve got. As we move more and more into a connected and multiple data source environment, where patients not techies are driving that source of data, so (to paraphrase). Hospitals increasingly cannot map or match the data that they have. In short, the HL7 data is neither clean from one source or another, nor do existing systems talk to each other. And whilst this is technical issue, the problem is commercial. Putting it right takes man hours and costs money.

Except that it doesn’t. And it comes through the decision of starting again, and putting your data on a cloud. What that means is, a cloud-based solution that does identity management, allows hospitals and organisations to rapidly and accurately deliver a patient record at the point of care – with the flexibility and scalability you need in today’s evolving and digital environment.

Shaz does not talk about technology. He talks about Service Level Agreements. He talks about peace of mind. The idea that you as a Hospital (say). can access all of your data, 24/7, safely on a cloud, without the need for local expert support. Amongst all of the solutions that a hospital might have, Nextgate is the single line that makes not just a difference – it is THE difference.

It is the reason why Shaz left his job at Orion, where he was a user of Nexgate technology, to take up an offer with the company that created the stuff.

Nextgate competes with the big IBM and Corporate Players in data integration. But it is addressing a real market need. The Obama driven “spine” of data accessibility mirrors the attempts in the UK to formalise data accessibility. Nextgate has reference sites and projects that are pan-Atlantic.

Yet it is a hard sell – what Nextgate are saying is; don’t wait until you have an issue before talking to us about our Cloud benefits. As they say in the song, – don’t lose sight of Paradise.

We talk with the EHNAC Executive Director, Lee Barrett, and ask – why now their time has come.

You could say it’s not what you say – it’s how you say it. You could argue that everything about EHNAC is a contradiction, a misnomer.

The image of silver-haired Lee Barrett as he sits back in his university-like Office, gently guiding me into his world – where he has been active for more years than I have fingers and toes – belies the relevance of EHNAC in the current medical world stage.

And that’s the problem. Or to put it another way in marketing-speak – maybe it is the “opportunity”.

EHNAC is a nationwide accreditation process for healthcare players. Up to now, and since its origins in 1993 – its focus has been to give you and I a framework, if you will, a set of guidance, that says you have passed the test – whatever that may mean. You would be forgiven to think that this is akin to taking your driving licence; you get the magic certificate, the nod from the examiner and off you go.

And this approach misses the point. Because EHNAC have moved on. To understand its importance, is to recognise that in getting accredited for your internal and external processes – you are protecting your entire business against the risk of the unforeseen. By complying with industry standards, you are mitigating your exposure to malevolence or just pure chance of things going wrong. A tick in the box from EHNAC means that your processes are reasonable and acceptable.

It’s not like the Assessors at EHNAC don’t have the know how to guide you. The academic atmosphere of Lee’s office gives rise to years of practical experience, across some of the key issues of modern healthcare, which EHNAC imparts to its accredited organisations as part of the deal.

EHNAC is currently active across all of the USA – and mandated in New Jersey, Maryland, and Texas, Compliance with individual State legislation is not a quick process at a government level. But it can be an immediate step at the individual vendor level.

In the litigious world we live in, never has Risk Management become so important. Lee’s parting words to me were:

“We are agnostic; our years of experience has taught us how to deliver standards that give a meaningful structure for each of our varied accredited organisations. What they actually do – is not important. It is how they do it”.

We are pleased to give airtime to several more of the vendors and their PR people, who have kindly contacted us. Please do use our Search bar above, to seek out anything specific that you need to know…

Jennifer Ringler writes to us to say; I want to offer you an opportunity to speak with Lonny Reisman, MD, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, HealthReveal, on the following topics:
· Why Accountable Care Organizations aren’t resulting in as much savings as expected, and how real-time health data technology can help
· How health monitoring technology and guideline directed medical therapy together can help deliver equal access to care for all populations, regardless of geography
· How patients with chronic diseases can achieve better outcomes and lower mortality rates through the use of real-time health monitoring technology and data
· How acute incidents in patients with chronic diseases can be both predicted and avoided through the use of health technology

We have also been contacted elsewhere to see if we would be interested in meeting with the VMware or Mercy companies, to discuss today’s top healthcare trends and the future of the industry.

Probably more interestingly, Upland Software have got in touch; they specialize in cloud software solutions for IT project and cost management. What they say is –

“The companies that we work with use our systems to manage the resources, costs and delivery of their projects. Over the past few years, we have come to work with a number of health organizations and what we find is that despite sometimes mature project processes, there seems to be a lack of standardized tools to help them be efficient at their work. Particularly in an environment where their extended team is made of Doctors and Clinicians, not project experts. “… They continue…

“Our solution, Eclipse, is unique in that it provides a way to centralize all project information, including inter-dependencies, status, costs, who is working on which project, and more. Over the past few years, we have helped almost 300 Health organizations giving them more control and visibility over their projects, so they can better manage project teams, allocate expenses, more accurately update key stakeholders, and keep project delivery on track.

At HIMSS we will be talking about the trends that we are seeing in project delivery, as well as showcasing our most recent release, with an expanded featureset for managing resources, time tracking and capabilities for greater project visibility. ”

Two Speakers have asked their PR people to write to us, and this is what they say; (we include their Links below)…

“Sevenikar will be opening the summit by speaking about how healthcare must evolve from caring for people to caring about people, and the importance of transitioning to a patient-centric revenue cycle in order to make this a possibility.

Vancleave will be speaking shortly after Sevenikar on the transformation that Mosaic Life Care has undergone to transition from a healthcare provider to a lifestyle company. As a result, Mosaic Life Care’s revenue cycle team has undertaken an ambitious overhaul of its financial structure, with more than 15 revenue projects scheduled to take place over five years.

The links below will take you to abstracts about Sevenikar and Vancleave, respectively, and the sessions they’ll lead. I’d be happy to provide you with more information on these two women and the hospitals/health systems they represent.

And almost finally – do feel free to talk to G Medical Innovations, a next generation mHealth company.

Listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in May 2017, G Medical Innovations have developed an integrated product suite that includes consumer medical grade and hospital grade monitoring devices set to launch into North America over the course of 2018.

What they say is; “With FDA approval and a strong pipeline of innovation, we hope this is a company you would be interested in learning more about.”

They continue… “Our goal and passion is to increase efficiencies in the healthcare system that both empower physicians and caregivers and improve personal quality of life. We do this by providing innovative medical monitoring solutions that provide accurate medical-grade diagnostics in real-time to save time and offer a heightened level of care.

We will be demonstrating both our consumer and commercial healthcare applications for the very first time at HIMMS, including:

The Prizma Medical Smartphone Case – due to set a new standard in personal healthcare, the Prizma enables you to easily transform your smartphone into a highly-reliable mobile medical device. With this unique device, you can independently manage your own health by continuously measuring, monitoring and sharing your vital signs with caregivers and loved ones. In addition to providing immediate access and updates to your personal health indicators and therefore peace of mind, medical data can be both stored and sent in your personal & highly-secured Data Portal Service where you can easily view, monitor and share it with those involved in your medical care. Prizma is an electrocardiogram, and also measures heart rate, stress levels, body temperature and oxygen saturation.

The Vital Sign Monitoring System with G Medical Patch – a modular, easy-to-use, clinical grade solution for monitoring patients. It utilizes patented wireless technologies, proprietary information technology and service platforms to empower a new generation of medical providers to increase efficiency and the level of healthcare provided to patients. Available for both in-patients and out-patients, the G Medical patch can be used to monitor patients in assisted living residences, hospitals, nursing homes and other in-patient facilities. By enabling patients to be mobile and still carefully and automatically monitored, the G Medical Patch takes the pressure off healthcare providers and personnel while enhancing patient care. Information from this continuously monitoring is transmitted, stored and sent to clinicians for at-a-glance summaries, giving both clinicians and patients peace of mind.

HIMMS will be the first time that both the ‘full flow’ of Prizma and the Vital Signs Monitoring System with G Medical Patch will be demonstrated”.

And finally for the time being…why not meet the Infinite Peripherals company at booth #3271? “They will be showcasing new products that will mobilize the healthcare industry, as well as a big piece of upcoming news.”

And just in case you didn’t know…

Infinite Peripherals, are a leading innovator of iOS business solutions, empowers businesses to operate more efficiently. The company offers barcode scanner data and insights that impact the bottom line in real-time as well as secure payment processing solutions for various industries including healthcare.

We look at the increasing lack of leadership in our UK Public Services, and its negative impact – and we say; its time to do something.

The question really is; “why”, – is it necessary to do something? Public Services are not going to disappear overnight. Whether you take a week to do nothing at all – or a year – will not necessarily impact on your own job. It might, however, impact on someone else’s life – but as a Clinical Director told me recently – “I have a nice house, and nice holidays; why am I putting myself on the line?”

Lack of decision-making means that the people who we entrust to look after us, provide our essential services, and who we had hoped would go the extra mile – have no need to do so. This results either in a lack of engagement, where – according to a colleague of mine recently moved from the private sector into local government – that her colleagues already had their coats on by 16.58 each day… or an increasing level of stress related absence through the paralysis of moving things forward, in times of increasing pressure and demand for the very services they feel unable to deliver.

It’s not our job here to tell others how to do their job. But it is our job to explain the damage that simply putting things off, keeping things the same, and hoping that maybe tomorrow things will work out – doesn’t fly. Particularly as we are moving, and have moved – into an arena of “personalised service”, where our individual use of personal data, our smartphones, our iPads, our fitness trackers – means that technology exists to deliver great improvements in quality of pubic service.

As Bogi Eliasen of the CIFS in Copenhagen said at the HIMSS Conference almost one year ago – by harnessing the data that is flowing, in realtime, across our desks every minute – we can better employ our people, enable them to make decisions related to the data that they themselves have access to, reduce the stress in our places of work – and actually do what the public are asking us, and expect us – to do.

Because – the fact is – we no longer have the option of simply throwing more people, and more cash, to continue doing things the way we always have – because it just doesn’t work any longer. There are just too many people living longer, with too many orthopaedic ailments, exponential rises in diabetes sufferers, that having a few more nurses, a few more clinics, some more phone-lines – can never hope to keep pace with the needs of society that are getting worse.

It is for this reason that the recent PR from NHS England, about its new Diabetes Partnerships, – is like adding an Elastoplast to cover my broken leg. It misses the fundamental point. Hospitals that prefer to use in house resources rather than engage with specialist IT help, are simply putting off the moment of truth – that we have reached a tipping point.

What we have seen is that, due to the new personal focus of our provision of services, we need to move out of the “silo” mentality of me doing my job, and you can do yours. We need to start looking at how we treat society as a whole, in particular the mix of Community based solutions linked to (say) hospital services.

In the same way that “if you always do what you always did – you will always get, what you always got~’ so it is obvious that our current ways of doing things, at just about every area of Management that we have looked at for this Article – simply do not deliver the results that society is increasingly asking for.

This means investment in new technologies, that are proven, and that can link performance to results and to costs. The technology exists and has done for some time. The question tho – is whether our Social and Public Service leaders can take the lead and deliver what the rest of us are asking. After all – they have nice houses and nice holidays to go to. We wouldn’t want them to risk all that, now would we?

As usual, we are pleased to do our annual Advance Report on those Announcements that have caught our attention.

Best among many, are Dave Anderson, and Stephanie Fraser, – who have made respective polite efforts to reach out to us on behalf of their respective clients EHNAC, and GDPR people Nextgate, and Moran Faibish and her very interesting Healthwatchtech company. But there are dozens of others, and here are just a few:

• Influence Health’s CEO, Rupen Patel and CHRISTUS Health’s VP of marketing, Preston Gee, will also be presenting on 3/7 @ 11:30 am in Palazzo B (ID: 140) – A New Era: The CMO’s Role at the Healthcare Consumerism Table. Both executives are available to address how the consumerization of healthcare is fundamentally changing the way healthcare organizations need to market themselves by creating Amazon-like experiences for patients, or risk losing market share.
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• Greenway Health, which recently earned the highest KLAS rating for Ambulatory Revenue Cycle Management Services, Small Clinics, will be announcing its next phase of Project Polaris, a next-generation practice management and EHR platform that will combine the best attributes from all of the company’s market-driven solutions to help providers effectively leverage a value-based healthcare environment for greater success.

Peter Hesse, 10Pearls’ CSO, will be presenting Magnetic PX: Building Secure, Engaging Experience, and would be happy to chat about the importance of security in providing patient experiences. He can also discuss how healthcare companies will need to adjust to meet HIPPA requirements as they implement emerging technologies such as AI and ML.

Ghazanfar Ghori, 10Pearls’ CTO, will be attending the event and available to discuss the solutions that his team has developed for their healthcare clients, such as HIPAA-compliant telehealth solutions that deliver care to patients in rural areas, online communities that connect caregivers to resources, and voice enabled AI applications capable of detecting dementia.

You can also arrange a meeting with data management provider Commvault’s General Manager of Worldwide Healthcare Business, Ananth Balasubramanian while at the show.

Ananth is available during the conference and can discuss, but not limited to:
· What HIT executives must know about GDPR ahead of May’s deadline, and how they can become compliant
· What HIT executives must know about ransomware, and how they can protect their organization and patients from increasingly savvy hackers
· What HIT executives should know if they are considering migrating data to the cloud, and how to most strategically plan this (multi-cloud vs. public vs. private)
· How healthcare entities can prepare and future-proof amid looming uncertainty as the administration deliberates how to make changes to healthcare reforms
· Amazon / JP Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway’s new healthcare behemoth, and what it could potentially mean for the broader industry
· How Commvault’s customers, such as Prime Healthcare and Montgomery County Memorial Hospital (and their patients) are benefitting from stronger, more secure data protection, recovery, backup and management in the cloud and on-premises.

David Dimond, CTO, and Dan Trott, Healthcare Field Director, Dell EMC Healthcare and Life Sciences, will also be there:

David and Dan will be onsite to discuss:
• Embracing a Digital Future and a supporting study commissioned by Dell EMC with Vanson Bourne Research
• Electronic Medical Record (EMR) adoption
• Changes in the healthcare technology landscape and high-profile mergers
• Leveraging multi-cloud environments

Dell EMC executives will be available to host industry discussions, providing perspective on these themes and how they support digital transformation in an ever-changing healthcare field. Along with these discussions, Dell EMC will host a number of interactive technology experiences, social media activities and customer events.

Courtney Cohen writes to say that; AI and natural language processing is starting to make waves in the healthcare space and Health Fidelity, industry leaders in providing scalable risk adjustment solutions, is bringing the technology to providers to use in a way like never before, such as discovering chronic conditions.

Why not come to meet with the Health Fidelity company, to discuss the advances NLP is making, as well as their recent partnership with Mount Sinai.

And then there are nice and polite invites; Amy Dardinger writes; The past few years, interoperability and AI have been the biggest trending topics at HIMSS. Many organizations are starting to get their systems in order, collecting more data points every day. This makes it even more difficult to synthesize the information to make it accessible and meaningful for healthcare providers.

Would you be interested in speaking with Gary Palgon, VP Healthcare and Life Science Solutions at Liaison Technologies, at HIMSS about the complexities of data integration in healthcare?

We invite any of our Readers to makle direct contact with any of the above vendors. We are simply passing on what they themselves are saying, without obligation or endorsement – They have taken their trouble to write to us. But equally there are dozens more. We will be producing our annual Report of HIMSS, towards the end of March 2018, but please contact us if you are looking for any specific health tech, and we will be pleased to point you where possible in the right direction.

Conferences are big business. A casual search for any vertical mix of “meeting point”, be it by topic or geography, could keep you and I continually doing the rounds of expensive hotels and free lunches everyday except weekends, until midway thru 2019 – and we haven’t even got through January some twelve months earlier.

Either the common understanding is that; conferences work. Or we are simply creatures of habit, we go because we always did.

Except that, for many – conferences, and the mini exhibitions that accompany these – deliver very little. Particularly for vendors, who splash out large sums but frequently tell us its a lot of cost for what ultimately does not deliver. And similarly for delegates – why is it that Speakers who should know by now how to communicate their corporate benefits, are so frequently unprepared, whose presentations are just so dull? Is it – to put it another way, there are simply better ways of achieving your goal – be it sales prospecting, market info, meeting your peers – than by jumping on the cattle run.

Then again – judging by the highly competent lists of theoretically highly competent decision-makers that always herald every getting-together – these guys would not do it, if it didn’t work. The answer, is to pick and choose the meetings where a/ you want to be visible; and b/ where the delegates that surround you are actually worth meeting.

And sure, there are the classic industry standard get-togethers, that are like the perennial flowers in my front garden. its the same people, the same format, the same booths, the same visibility. If you are not there, then people “assume” you are not anywhere. I am not talking about these. You can put healthcare, and hospitality into those boxes. There are many more.

The trick is to identify conferences that are addressing an actual market need. Nowhere is this more obvious and important, than in the technology arena. And these conferences too are changing. If 2016/2017 were the years of Big Data, and then GDPR – we are now seeing the more discussion based formulae. These are the meetings that you need to go to, because they deliver original thinking.

It has long been recognised that the real hidden benefit of this level of conference – is the casual networking, the informal discussion. Best among the upcoming conferences is the Future of Finance 2018 Discussion, on Feb 19th in London. Organised by IQPC, this promises to be an innovative forum based event, that brings together the people that can shape the industry, and where you can play a part. Worth registering.

We look at how industries are preparing, and ask – have businesses already moved on?

For the past two years, whole industries ranging from Conference Organisers, to newly articulate Vendors – have sprung up professing abilities and proficiencies to help us manage the data compliance of GDPR – coming live in just a few months.

And their message may have been getting through. In Scandinavia, you cannot find any free Consultants able to take on any new projects. In our calls to UK vendors, few even answered our calls. If past history is anything to go by, companies typically leave things to the last minute – so maybe there will be this rush to the final hurdle when the deadline May comes around.

Or maybe there won’t. According to Richard Copland, Partner at The Future Shapers – those companies that were going to do something – have already done so. The concern over GDPR among the large corporates where this can matter – has already been dealt with and life is moivinbg on to more important areas of data handling.

This mirrors our own experience. In interviews we have had in the Financials and Insurance areas, the need is not for data compliance. The concern is how to identify key bits of customers information that can make a commercial difference. In other words, technology and IT is not the problem any more; we are getting back to basics of – what drives our businesses and above all, what will give these companies a commercial edge.

Interestingly, Trade Conferences per se are no longer seen as the giver of new comparative information, because it is rare to find vendors who genuinely have anything new to say. Whilst there are exceptions to this, their importance is in the casual networking of vendor to delegate and delegate to delegate.

Where this takes us in the future – is that 2018 will be the catalyst for specific vendors who genuinely have a new vision and a new take on their market. Linking technology to commercial benefit, will be the difference.